Homosexuality on the Rise in Saudi Arabia
Result of an Oppressive Regime or Are Saudis Coming Out of the Closet?


According to an article The Kingdom in the Closet in the May 2007 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, many in the Saudi population, both male and female, frequently engage in homosexual acts despite the fact that it is punishable by death under Islamic Sharia law. Homosexuality seems risky in a kingdom sometimes called "The Land of The Two Holy Mosques", a reference to Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest places. Much of the Kingdom's law is derived from an ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam commonly known as Wahhabism, which has zero tolerance for diversity.

According to Western Resistance, one of the reasons that a large segment of the Saudi population engages in homosexual acts is that it's frankly easier to mingle with members of the same sex in the highly restrictive and oppressive regime--

According to Islamic law homosexuality is punishable by death. This punishment, however, is a poor deterrent. According to the article, most Saudi men become gay because it's easier to pick up a man than to find a woman. The situation is the same for young women. The article claims that Saudi Arabia's inhumane laws and dread morality police, which forbid dating between young men and women, in fact are a major factor pushing them towards homosexuality in their youth.

In his article, Queer Shiek, Being openly gay in Saudi Arabia used to be a death sentence-but times are changing, John R. Bradley describes the scene at a western-type mall in the city of Jeddah-

Homosexuality on the Rise in Saudi Arabia - Associated Content

Go figure.

__________________
"I will continue to be an impossible man as long as those men who are possible today remain possible." - Bakunin, letter to Ogarev.

"The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods, but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality." - John Dewey.

Maybe they are running out of all of those "virgins" they are promised for doing suicide bombings

Who knows

Maybe they oughta get rid of that ultra-fundamentalist Monarchy.

__________________
"I will continue to be an impossible man as long as those men who are possible today remain possible." - Bakunin, letter to Ogarev.

"The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods, but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality." - John Dewey.

How does Atlanic Monthly KNOW that homosexuality is on the rise?

The laws haven't changed have they?

So if their theory is that the laws against men and women intermingling are the cause, and those laws have been in place for a long long time, their theory doesn't make sense.

Should give you some idea ....

Memo from the Editors

Yeah, right!

Doesn't do a damned thing explaining how they know that homosexuality is on the rise, or if it is, why, either.

I was merely pointing out .... QUOTE! "The Atlantic’s first Ideas Issue, not around speculative experimentation, academic abstraction, or gee-whiz gizmos—cool though they may be—but around real-world attempts to rethink big questions." might explain the drift of their magazine?

Gzzzz, don't yell at me! I am not one of their reporters!

Homosexual Muslims??

Didn't you know there is no such thing??????

__________________
"If you want the government to give you puppies and rainbows, don't pout when you're picking up dog shit in the rain"
--Skull Pilot


...being permitted to vote for politicians who enact unjust, oppressive new laws magically converts the stripes on prison shirts into emblems of freedom.
--James Bovard

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
-- U.S. Supreme Court, in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.
- Wendell Johnson

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
-- Thomas Carlyle

Wait a minute? I thought all the buzz was that you are BORN a homosexual, not that you could CHOSE to be one.

Perhaps this article should submit their "findings" to the Medical community to help us " Understand" Homosexuality?

__________________
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. Indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

-Bertrand Russell

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable

-Laurence J. Peters

I never said that you had no right to have an opinion. I just said that it was, in fact, worth nothing.

-Maineman ( on 12 June 2007)

If you were under the impression I was yelling at you, please know that I was not.

I fail to see how Atlantic Monthly ame to the conclusions (or specualtions) they did.

Nothing about that theory makes sense.

Go talk to a Muslim with some knowledge of the Koran and don't believe what the media tell you, or you'll find yourself reported as wanting to wipe Saudi Arabia off the map or something and be sent to Gautanamo. Some say that quotation is about raisins! If people are brave enough to die to oppose oppression they don't do it for silly fantasies but because of real suffering.

Surely the point is that there are a few people wholly committed to a homosexual lifestyle and a rather greater number committed to heterosexuality, but that, for most people, things will depend on opportunity. Thus some RC priests go in for child-abuse, while many sailors and prisoners (for instance) traditionally favoured homosexual acts, the other kind not being available. Classical Athenian society kept its women in harem-like conditions and thereofore romanticised the love of young men. Obviously some sort of homosexual feeling is going affect relationships in the puritanical area east of the Mediterranean, as it always has, whatever the religion.

Okie dokie. You seem to know much more about it than the average bear (like Yogi) - so I will take your word for it.

"raisins" ?

It is reactionary against oppression. According to a great book on the regime, many men in Saudi Arabia put their phone numbers in the back windows of their cars making it look like many cars are for sale. So says the below book, it is men hoping women will call them. The people of the regime are very sexually repressed. I think think may be an extension of that.

Amazon.com: Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude: Robert Baer: Books


A great book. I suggest both his books (he has a fiction piece as well... I haven't read it).